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A tantalizing hint of historical truth comes when Pharaoh's daughter adopts the child in the basket and names him Moses. The name is connected to a Hebrew verb indicating that she drew him from the water. Many scholars, however, think it derives from an Egyptian suffix meaning "to be born"--just as Rameses, who was considered divine, is a form of Ra-Moses, or "the god Ra is born."
He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian.
When the ancient rabbis imagined Moses' days as a prince of Egypt, they thought mostly of a good education: Moses, they wrote, absorbed all Egypt's learning, both scientific and occult, and spoke 70 languages. More recent commentators and The Prince of Egypt have focused on questions of assimilation and dual identity. But Exodus cuts directly from the infancy story to Moses' fateful moment of outraged ethnic solidarity and justifiable homicide. Pursued by Pharaoh, Moses flees to the land of Midian. There he meets Zipporah, the daughter of the chieftain Jethro (also called Reuel and Hobab), as she draws water from a well. Soon he takes her as his wife, and they have two sons. Nahum Sarna, in his book Exploring Exodus, notes the story's similarities to an Egyptian tale circulating at the time of Rameses. In it, the courtier Sinuhe takes refuge with Bedouins in southern Syria fearing he will be blamed for the assassination of a Pharaoh; there he marries the eldest daughter of the local chief. In the end, Sinuhe returns to Egypt to face the new Pharaoh. Such tales of political refuge and return abound in the ancient Near East.
But could someone like Moses ever become a prince? In his book, Hoffmeier notes that the Egyptian court reared and educated foreign-born princes, who then bore the title "child of the nursery." He believes Moses was one of these privileged foreigners, some of whom went on to serve as high officials in their adopted land. In an intriguing study published in 1988, the German scholar Ernst Axel Knauf speculated that the Moses story could have been built around a Syrian named Bay, who had served as Egypt's chief treasurer and ascended the throne as Ramose-khayemnetjeru. Civil war ensued, leading not only to his exile but also to that of his followers. Chancellor Bay, who flourished after Rameses II, had a tomb built in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
There was a bush all aflame, yet the bush was not consumed... God called to him out of the bush: "Moses! Moses!"
Like many prophets to come, Moses is reluctant to take up the burden. "I have marked well the plight of my people in Egypt and have heeded their outcry," announces God. "I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians." Moses responds with excuses and conditions: "I am slow of tongue and slow of speech." This line caused some religious scholars to assume Moses stuttered; others inferred a more serious speech impediment. "Who am I," he asks, to help undertake this mission? And who, exactly, is God to ask it? "Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh," replies the deity, which has been translated as "I am that I am." In another response God announces his name as YHWH, a Hebrew word that may have been derived from the verb "to be." It came to be regarded as so holy that it could not be pronounced and was read out loud instead as Adonai, or "the Lord."